Leaving it all on the court

I've tried repeatedly to be a fan of the World Cup. Since it is of such importance to so many I keep thinking there must be a soccer fan somewhere in the designs of my humanity that I've so far failed to tap into.

The only time I've really been able to get into the World Cup was during America's surprising 2002 run in Asia. I'd be lying if I said I was waking up at four in the morning for any reason other than nationalistic spite.

So is it all about nationalism?

That would be the easy answer, but so much of the World Cup's audience's home nations aren't even involved. Some never are and never will be.

Then it must be admiration for the skill and creativity of the performers. But wouldn't the exoticness of their skill appeal to Americans, who use their feet only to get from one point to the next, as much or more than anyone else?

Watching the Brazil-Croatia match yesterday I think I was able to figure out why I (and maybe all Americans) don't fully get the soccer thing, and probably never will.

The Brazilian striker Ronaldinho immediately jumped out at me. Not just because he looks like a cross between Busta Rhymes and a drag queen, but because he seemed to be moving at a different speed than the other players.

This a phenomena I've noticed before, especially in football; Reggie Bush on the college level and Deion Sanders in the NFL come to mind.

Ronaldinho also displayed clearly superior court vision. Some would say like a great NBA point guard (more on that later,) but what it reminded me of was a great hockey center like Gretzky or Lemieux.

One of the reasons I've never been able to properly appreciate hockey was I could never reconcile how much better the truly great players were than everyone else. In his prime, the instant Gretzky stepped on the ice the game totally changed -- but it was lost on me why the other players couldn't do the things Gretzky could. I always attributed this to hockey drawing from a small population pool for a major (yes, it used to be) sport.

Soccer has no such demographic excuse, yet the way Ronaldinho is able to casually flip pinpoint passes of the wrong side of his foot and keep the ball close to his body as if he had his own gravitational pull was not matched by the other players in the Brazil- Croatia match. Not even close.

Why couldn't the other players do this? Hadn't they practiced enough? Maybe it would be different if I had played more soccer as a kid. Except I didn't play proper American Football and never found myself asking these question while watching a football game.

Which brings me to basketball, the only American sport that can even dream of rivaling soccer's popularity world wide. Basketball players such as Magic Johnson and John Stockton were praised for having extraordinary court vision. But was their court vision really any better than Jamal Tinsely's is? Or even Rick Brunson? On that same point Michael Jordan's air-walking made him an international icon in silhouette, but he was no more athletic or explosive in the air than Vince Carter, or even Darvin Ham.

What made Johnson, Stockton and Jordan great wasn't that they possessed some unreconcilable athletic advantage, but that they took an extreme God-given ability and willed themselves, through practice and on-court competitiveness, to be better than others that possessed the same God-given ability.

When I see a great soccer player I see a supremely gifted prima donna who loafs around and occasionally makes flashy, or even amazing, plays that get the crowd to squeal, but don't seem to be much danger to the other team. Of course that same player just needs to break through once every 90 minutes to seal his reputation and, more often than not, lead his team to victory.

I like to see my superstars sweat. The great ones in soccer sweat the least.

While that doesn't answer the questions of why soccer is popular around the world, it may answer the questions as to why soccer isn't popular in the United States.